“Yes.”
“You probably saw someone who resembled her.”
Emma became frustrated.
“No.”
“Emma—”
“Bruno was with her.”
The room changed.
Lorenzo rose so quickly his chair crashed backward.
Emma jumped.
“What did you say?”
“The dog.”
Lorenzo walked around the desk.
Bruno.
Isabella’s enormous black Cane Corso.
He had disappeared the same night she died.
Search teams had covered almost thirty miles.
No dog.
No collar.
No body.
Lorenzo crouched until his eyes were level with Emma’s.
“What did Bruno look like?”
“Big.”
“What else?”
“Black.”
“Anything else?”
Emma thought carefully.
Then she hooked one tiny finger.
“He had the broken circle.”
Lorenzo felt the blood leave his face.
Six years earlier, Bruno had chased a squirrel into the iron fence and bent the steel ring attached to his leather collar almost completely sideways.
Lorenzo had bought a new collar.
Isabella had thrown it into a drawer.
“He earned that scar,” she had laughed. “Let him keep it.”
Almost nobody knew about the bent ring.
And in every photograph Emma had seen, it was hidden beneath Bruno’s throat.
Lorenzo whispered:
“Show me where.”
Before Emma could answer, a laundry basket crashed in the hallway.
Sophia Walker stood in the doorway.
She had gone completely white.
“Emma.”
The little girl turned.
“I told him.”
Sophia closed her eyes.
Lorenzo rose slowly.
“You saw her too.”
It was not a question.
Sophia looked at her daughter.
Then at Lorenzo.
Fear filled her face.
Not confusion.
Fear.
“Yes.”
Lorenzo’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“You saw my wife alive and said nothing?”
“I didn’t know what I saw.”
“You recognized Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“You recognized Bruno?”
Sophia swallowed.
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened.
“Then why didn’t you come to me?”
Sophia’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because after we left the station, someone followed us home.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Lorenzo stopped moving.
“What?”
“A gray SUV.”
“How long?”
“Four blocks.”
“You’re certain?”
“I changed direction twice.”
“License plate?”
“I couldn’t see it.”
“Driver?”
“No.”
“Did Isabella see you?”
“I think so.”
“What did she do?”
Sophia looked toward Emma.
“She ran.”
Mason Reed arrived six minutes later.
He was Lorenzo’s head of security, a former federal investigator with graying hair, quiet eyes, and the irritating habit of remaining calm when everyone else wanted to break furniture.
Lorenzo told him everything.
Mason listened.
Then said, “You’re staying here.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“My dead wife may be alive.”
“Exactly.”
“And you expect me to sit here?”
“If Isabella survived and is hiding, there is a reason.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
Mason did not retreat.
“Someone followed Sophia,” Mason continued. “If Isabella is hiding from whoever staged that crash, they may be watching the station.”
Lorenzo’s voice dropped.
“You believe Emma?”
“I believe she described something she shouldn’t know.”
That distinction mattered.
Lorenzo hated it anyway.
Mason took Sophia to identify the location while Emma remained at the estate under protection.
Forty minutes later, Lorenzo received a call.
“We found evidence someone stayed here,” Mason said.
